Infinity War One-Shot - The Only Way
by Katie Trillion
Summary: Loki is going to die. We all know that. The only question is, how should he die? Meanwhile, on the plains of Wakanda, battle is brewing, starting with Thanos's obsessive quest for the Infinity Stones. And on the decimated, empty planet of Titan, another fight for survival will ensue. Who will survive?
1. Chapter 1

Infinity War Fanfiction: Part One: **THE ONLY WAY**

Loki strode inside the room, confident and smiling.

"If you're planning an expedition to Midgard, you may be needing a guide. I assure you that - as you well know - I have experienced that realm more than once, and know its strengths and weaknesses."

Thanos looked at him, his eyes cold and merciless like a cat thoughtfully examining a mouse, as though he could see every single thought and decision that went on in Loki's head.

"You consider failure experience?" Thanos said, and he smiled as he saw the flicker of anger in Loki's eyes as he said this. "You consider the terrible way that you were treated by S.H.I.E.L.D and the others on that foul, backward realm _experience_? You think that the complete disaster with..." he paused, either savouring or detesting the memory, "with the Chitauri and the Avengers is _experience_?"

"I consider _experience _experience." Loki ignored the many obvious jabs at his pride and actions on Midgard that had been included in the speech and took a step forwards, towards Thanos.

The four vaguely humanoid, horribly misshapen creatures that were accompanying the Titan stood back. Their newly-sharpened weapons were glinting in their mismatched or distorted hands, and their slightly shiny skin looked like melted wax, as though each had been burned.

Loki carefully ignored their inquisitive stares, and the way their warped, clawed hands tightened on their weapons. One, standing slightly to the left of the others, with the sideways-clicking mandibles of some kind of insect or arachnid and multi-faceted, bulging black eyes looked particularly interested, skittering on spiky, mantis-like legs whose knees pointed backwards like a bird's.

Still stubbornly ignoring them, Loki continued:

"I, Loki, son of Laufey, Prince of Asgard, the rightful king of Jotunheim, god of mischief..." he paused for a second beside the gagged and helpless Thor, and his mouth twisted in a sneer. "Odinson." Thor just looked at him, his one eye full of sadness and pain and fury, and Loki knew exactly what was going on in Thor's glacier-slow mind: _Can I trust him? Should_ _I trust him? He _is_ my brother..._

Loki's elegant golden knife appeared, carefully hidden in his hand so that Thanos couldn't see it. For a moment the blade was edged with faint green light. Thor caught sight of it, and met Loki's gaze for a moment, then looked away.

Loki stood before Thanos for a second, then went down on one knee.

"I pledge my _undying_ fidelity to you."

Then his hand, holding the knife, came up, intending to slit Thanos's throat, even though the quick death was too good for the Titan.

His hand froze in mid-air, the golden blade not more than a hair's breadth from Thanos's neck. Blue light flickered around his arm up to his shoulder.

Loki could feel little sparks of pain in his wrist and shoulder slowly beginning travel up his arm, and knew instinctively - from all the times that Thanos had infiltrated his dreams, _his nightmares_,and tortured him - that the pain would intensify if Thanos wanted it to.

"Undying?" said the Titan. "You should try to choose your words more carefully before you speak them, Asgardian."

Loki saw a tiny bead of blood running down the metal and felt it come into contact with his skin; the blood was warm and fresh. Thor,his face shocked and somehow scared was staring at him from the other side of the room. There was blood on his neck. Loki's eyes widened, all ease and confidence vanishing from them.

"What have you done?" he asked, his voice quiet and even admiring. "Do you mean to make me murder - "

"Yes, that's right, son of Laufey," Thanos said, smiling. "You are, perhaps, a little more intelligent than I expected. I can and I _will_ make you kill him. Would you like to know what is actually going on, magic-wise?"

Loki nodded, not taking his eyes off Thanos.

"Well, it's like this." Thanos showed Loki the blue Space Stone that was pulsing and glittering with light in the golden confines of the Infinity Gauntlet.

"This little twinkling trinket is causing a space distortion, so the..." Thanos paused, trying to think of how to explain it. If Jane had been there, the discussion would probably gone into quantum physics or something, but magic was slightly simpler.

"The idea of your knife, which is like... the magical essence of your knife is constantly travelling backwards and forwards in space from second to second, so that knife is both here, being completely harmless to me, and also there, being a lot more dangerous and threatening to slit your brother's throat."

"I didn't underestimate you." Loki tried to sneer, but didn't pull it off. He could feel the vein in Thor's throat pulsing, pulsing with life that he could end with just one quick slash; he just had to press the blade down and pull it across.

Thanos pulled Loki's wrist up sharply, and Loki saw Thor wince a little as the knife made a shallow cut in neck, and Loki felt hot blood run over his hand.

"Stop." Loki said, his voice low and level. The golden knife in his hand was shaking as he fought to bring his arm down, but the pain in his wrist and shoulder suddenly increased and he cried out.

"_Stop._" Thanos mimicked. "Now kill Thor."  
Loki shook his head. "No."  
"No? You have hated him, Loki Laufeyson, you have always hated him."

Loki's hand shook again, and he winced.

"I might have hated him in the past, but he's my brother. I can't count how many times Thor has trusted me when he should have hated me, and I can't count how many times I've nearly died for him."

Surprise flickered in Thanos's eyes for a moment, then was extinguished by hard, cold anger.

The blue light surrounding Loki's arm went out, and the room would have seemed darker if not for the continuing glow of the two Infinity Stones.

"If you won't kill him, Loki Laufeyson - "

"That is not my name," Loki snarled, tightening his grip on the knife handle. "My name is Loki Odinson."

"Whatever you wish to call yourself," Thanos said dismissively, "I am not so stupid as to kill you, Asgardian."

"You _are_ that stupid," Loki said, making a brave attempt at scorn, "because you've gone and brought me here, haven't you?"

In the instant after he said the words, Loki felt pain embed itself in his bones, like a parasite, or the spear point that had killed him in Svartalfheim. Loki fell to the ground, and the dagger in his hand flew out of his reach, clattering on the floor. He tried not to scream, _he would not scream for this monster_. Not again.

He heard Thor's muffled yell of "Loki!".

Thanos looked down at him, eyes cold and scornful, the Infinity Stones still glittering with an eerie light.

He picked up Loki's dagger, which looked like a child's toy in his huge hand, then directed one of his companions to drag Loki over to the shackles fixed into one wall; Loki didn't resist as this was done, the pain had made his normally alert body seem slow and lethargic.

By the time his wrists and ankles were secured, the effects had vanished, but of course this was no use whatsoever now.

Thanos was suddenly right beside him. The Titan was holding a tiny bottle that was like an object from a doll's-house in his hand. The surface of the bottle looked like mother-of-pearl, swirling with iridescent colour.

Loki looked at Thor. There was his knife, not being visibly held by anyone, at his brother's throat, again.

"Drink, Asgardian, or Thor dies... slowly."

Thanos unlocked one of Loki's hands and pushed the tiny bottle into it.

Loki looked at Thor.

Thor shook his head. Unable to speak through the gag, he thought at Loki:

_Don't drink it, brother. I don't know what it is exactly, but - _

_It's poison. I know. _Loki thought back, resisting the temptation to think: '_I'm not stupid._'. Instead he voiced his uncertainty. _I'm just not sure which one. _

_Then leave me and get out._

_I won't let you die! _

Thor glared at him. _Fine, go and get yourself killed or worse._

_I'm not scared if it's fatal. _

_You are. _

_I've died many times. You know that I have... certain connections in Hel at the present time._

_You mean that Hela, the queen, is your daughter?_

_See? I can get out of there, and come back easily. _

_It's the _or worse _part that you're worried about, brother, isn't it?_

Loki sighed softly. _I don't get scared. _

_You do, and you have. _

_Thor - I'm going to drink it - I'm sorry. _

_No - brother, don't - _

Loki downed the contents of the bottle in one gulp. Thanos smiled, as though he'd heard the conversation between the two gods as easily as if they'd been speaking out loud.

The bottle fell to the floor from Loki's hand, breaking into pieces, a tiny dribble of clear liquid spreading from the shards.

Loki went nearly completely limp, eyes closed, his breathing shallow, his skin slowly turning from white to blue, revealing his Jotunheim heritage.

Thor was glaring at Thanos, unable to say the words "You - -!"

Thanos looked at him, still smiling. The purple stone - Thor remembered that this one was Power - was shining brighter than the blue stone now, its light nearly blinding, such was its strength.

A tiny spark of purple light flew from the surface of the stone, then bobbed through the air and into Loki's mouth. The god's eyes flew open, the blue tint vanishing from his skin.

_What have you done? _Thor said, lightning crackling in his remaining eye as he glared at the Titan.

"It will give him power... for a time. But it will slowly kill him from the inside, because no body - either human or of godly or alien origin - can control something that... unwieldy for long, even for a few days; it's much the same concept as the Aether that possessed your Jane Foster."

Thanos smiled as Thor blinked at the mention of Jane, and knew that Thor knew about the danger she would be in, in just a few more days.

"Your adopted brother on the other hand," Thanos continued, "he will not last for long, I'm afraid, maybe a week, possibly nine days or so if he resists. He is one of the weakest gods that I've ever seen - predictable, selfish, annoying, full of resentment and anger, and always wriggling like a fish on a hook when it comes to things that he's caused. Andhe _always _manages to escape!"

_You can't talk. _

Thanos inclined his head a little. "Thankyou."

Loki moaned softly, his eyelids fluttering like trapped butterflies. A trickle of some transparent liquid, flecked with the unmistakable red of blood, oozed from the corner of his mouth.

_Loki? _Thor said, his thoughts urgent. He could sense only troubled dreams and dark, twisted images from his brother's mind.

_A lonely, ice-ridden land, howling winds whipping across the many glaciers that crept across the land and down into the deep valleys. Shadows lined the cracks in the thick ice and the chasms that punctured the glaciers were filled with a shifting sea of shadows, interspersed with wavering rays of pale light. _

_There was a half-ruined castle, made of stone and ice that was clumped clumsily together, filled with slits for windows and great holes were common in the walls as though a huge fist had been battering at the building. The highest tower was looming up out of the jagged peaks of the mountain-tops; in the slowly crumbling room that looked out over the mountains and the eternal darkness, a huge, blue-skinned humanoid shape was sitting on an icy throne. The throne was made of a single block of dark stone that was edged with jagged shards of ice and snow. Only the silhouette of the person's back and head visible, melding into the silhouette of the back of the throne. The long, wickedly sharp spear that was clutched tightly in its hands looked thicker than a tree trunk, and the glittering point stood out sharp and clear against the bleached white landscape. _

_Suddenly the figure raised its massive head, revealing red eyes that glowed in the icy darkness._

"_You are my son." The voice was like an earthquake, deep and rumbling. The blue fingers tightened their grip on the spear._

_There were piercing screams from the room next to Loki's, echoing through the thin wall. The god - he was much younger now, little more than a teenager - was sitting on his bed, and his head was in his hands, tears on his face._

_Angrboda, the giantess who was now giving birth to Loki's - Loki tried not to break down again - Loki's children, was screaming. _

_Because of him. _

_After what seemed an age of Loki desperately trying not to hit something just to try and keep his feelings - love, anger, fear - in check, the screaming stopped. The door of his room - its was more of a cell really - was nudged carefully open by a tiny snout, ending in a wet black nose like a dog's. The wolf cub's head and then the rest of its boy, its dark fur still wet and a little wobbly on its paws, eased its way through the gap, green eyes glittering with intelligence. _

_The arrow-shaped head of a snake, its head a hand's-span wide and its scales the vivid green of poison, slipped through the gap next, which was quickly followed by the rest of its body._

_The third and last of his children was human-shaped, small for a newborn, wrapped in a dark green blanket, and was being carried by a woman - not Angrboda - so that only the right side of the girl's head could be seen; her skin was unnaturally white for a baby's, and her eyes were bright forest green, as green as the wolf cub's. _

_Following them, limping a little, was Odin, his lined and weathered face implacable and unreachable, wincing in disgust as he beheld the left side of the child's face. Then the woman carrying the girl turned the baby's face so that Loki could see her. _

_The other side of the girl's face was rotting, dead flesh, lips pulled back from teeth that were brown with age and rot; her other eye was decaying in its bruised socket, nothing more than a few scraps of eyeball. _

"_Their names are Fenrir, for the wolf, Jormungandr is the serpent and Hela is the..." Odin paused as if thinking of what to call her "...the girl."_

_Loki nodded, feeling Fenrir's head, the wolf's fur nearly dry now, nudge his hand, then felt Jormungandr's smooth, leathery scales against his legs. He stroked the cub's back obligingly, then the snake's head. _

_Hela wailed softly in the woman's arms, her tiny limbs thrashing. Loki stood up, then took the child from the woman and cradled the girl in his arms, not caring about her ruined face or that she would never be truly thought of as human. _

"_How is Angrboda?" he asked abruptly, looking up at Odin. Hela had stopped wailing and was staring silently up at Odin as though something in her inexperienced infant mind knew what going on. Odin's father's one-eyed gaze bored into Loki. They locked stares for a moment. _

"_Angrboda... is dead. She died a minute or so ago from severe blood loss." Odin's voice was cold and final, like a door had been closed on the subject. _

_Loki blinked. His mouth hardened into a thin white line. _

"_Liar."_

"_How dare you, Loki - " _

"_Liar!" Loki was shouting now. "You killed her, she wouldn't have died, I know she wouldn't have, but you killed her in cold blood, I know it!" _

_Hela began to sob again, frightened by the noise, and Loki immediately forgot his anger and shushed the child. She stopped crying and smiled, and Odin glared at the grisly smile that spread across her tiny, half-rotted face. _

_Hela's lips moved in an echo of Loki's. _

_The younger god gave Hela back to woman, then pushed past his father, through the open door, and into the next room. _

_There was Angrboda's limp body on the floor, the size of a normal woman, most of her covered by a bloodstained sheet except for her face. Her long black hair was framing her face and making her blue Jotunheim skin seem brighter. _

_There was blue frost giant blood all over the floor, which matched Odin's story of her dying from 'severe bleeding', but it could also... Loki knelt next to Angrboda's body, and pulled back the sheet. _

_Over Angrboda's heart was a single stab wound. _

_Loki stood up, pulling the sheet back over Angrboda. _

_He was shaking with anger and grief, green magic spiralling from his fingers, spinning the room back in time. Slightly translucent illusions formed, showing Loki what had happened:_

_Odin stabbing the helpless giantess as she lay exhausted and completely vulnerable on the now blood-soaked floor, then taking the screaming newborn Hela from the dead woman's limp arms and walking away._

_Loki fell to his knees on the blood-covered floor, tears mixing with the blue blood that was staining his hands, the illusions vanishing._

_Odin was standing in the doorway, his face impassive. "You have done a great wrong to Asgard by your actions, Loki. You will not be punished, but your children are a different matter, although that will not be for some time."_

_When Jormungandr was ten years old and could encircle the whole of Asgard easily, Odin put the snake's tail into its mouth to stop it getting any larger, then threw Jormungandr into the seas that surrounded Midgard. _

_Fenrir was left to wander the forests around Asgard. _

_But when Hela was ten years old, Odin dragged her by the hair to the black granite cliffs of Asgard and threw the girl from Asgard. _

_Hela fell for seven days and seven nights from the cliffs, and she landed in a dark, gloomy place called Hel. _

_But because of the power that ran through her veins, both Jotun and godly, Hela grew into the queen of that land, and she rules over the dead to this day..._

"_Do you think you know pain, son of Laufey? When Thanos comes for you, you will long for something so sweet as pain..."_

_And Thanos came for Loki. _

_Loki screamed. The Titan Thanos looked down at his tortured body, smiling. _

"_Now, will you do what I ask? Let the Chitauri into this world?"_

_There was a faint moan from Loki. _

"_I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that," said Thanos. _

"_Yes..." Loki whispered, his voice raw from screaming. _

_Thanos picked the god up by his throat. Loki's eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, and there were multiple scratches on his face and arms. _

_Loki nodded, his throat constricted so that he couldn't speak. _

"_Good." Thanos said. _

_He threw Loki to the ground, where the god lay still. _

"_Now keep your promise."_

_Loki, older now, ran up behind the huge form of the Kursed and stabbed the spear straight through the place where its heart should have been, fully expecting the monster to fall to the ground, dead. _

_The Kursed turned, and with lightning swiftness, pulled the god of mischief off his feet and yanked him backwards by the shoulders so that the point of the spear entered through Loki's back and protruded from Loki's sternum. _

_He heard Thor's yell of "Loki!" as he slipped off the spear and landed hard on the ground, feeling pain pulsing through his body from the wound, his own blood warm and sticky on his fingers._

It hurt. It hurt.

_He tried to calm his heartbeat, but the blood still pulsed just quickly from the hole in his chest. _

_He gasped as another unseen elf pushed a dagger between his ribs, then pulled it out sharply, sending more blood flooding over the ashy ground. _

It hurt. It hurt.

_Loki saw a blur of battered, blood-spattered silver armour and a swirl of tattered scarlet fabric beside him, then the elf's body fell to the ground beside him, and rolled down the ash-coated slope. _

_Thor's face came into focus above him, and Loki saw that his something in his slow, idiotic face was very, very scared. _

"_Loki - " _

_Loki breathed in shakily, tasting blood in his mouth. "I'm sorry - I'm sorry - "_

"_No, you're going to be fine, you'll be fine, trust me - " Thor tried to pick Loki up and move him, Loki's blood coating his hands in scarlet that was nearly as red as his cape, but Loki winced as his brother's hands aggravated both of his wounds and Thor immediately stopped what he was doing. _

_Loki felt more blood gushing over his skin, and Thor took a hurried step towards him, kneeling in the ash. Loki swallowed, and felt a tight band of pain fasten itself around his forehead. He winced, but it faded away in seconds. Another lance of pain embedded itself in his side, and it was as though the dagger had never been removed from the wound. _

"_I'm sorry - "_

"_No - brother, please - "_

_Loki's head fell back, his limbs went limp, and the flow of blood from his chest and _

_side slowly stopped... _

_Hela was waiting for him, with her hands on her hips. "Don't you come here just a little bit more often these days, Father?"_

_Loki smiled. Hela had grown up fast into a beautiful young woman, with long white-blonde hair but green eyes like his; her being the ruler of Hel had changed Hela as well - she now wore a long ankle-length gown that was made of alternating pieces of black and white silk, like disinterred bones and the dark, claustrophobic interior of a grave. On her head was a crown of black stone and silver twisted together, and there were intricately engraved bone rings on her fingers. _

_Her face was still the same, though; one side beautiful, smiling, as full of razor-sharp wit as her father's, and the other rotting and dead, a symbol of how life fades and withers, that even beauty such as hers would not last. Even Loki, with all his illusions and magic, couldn't change that. _

"_I just wanted to see you again. I _am _you father."_

_She smiled, and hugged him. Looking up into his eyes, she said: _

"_Just don't use that excuse again, okay? When you next come, it'll be for good."_

_Loki nodded, knowing that even he couldn't avoid death forever. The Queen of Hel nodded back to him, her black-and-silver crown glittering darkly in the light from the many candles lining her hall, then let him go. Loki didn't look back..._

"_Father? Father, are you there? I can't quite see you."_

_Hela squinted into the darkness beyond her throne; the many candles had all gone out simultaneously just a second ago._

"_Father?" she called again. _

_The crumpled body of Loki flickered into focus. The god was lying on the floor on his back, eyes closed and his breathing very shallow, one arm stretched out towards Hela. There were dried bloodstains around his mouth. _

"_Father?" _

_Hela knew that Loki was somewhere between life and death, somewhere that nobody, not her nor even Odin could reach him. _

_Hela got up from her throne, then knelt beside Loki, her immaculate black silk skirts pooling over the floor, the fabric laced through with an iridescent rainbow of colours like light refracting across a beetle wing or oil mixed with water, her long blonde hair brushing his face. She pressed two fingers to the side of his throat - his heartbeat was weak and faint, barely there. _

_There was a scream from outside the throne room, but Hela paid it no mind. There was always screaming here, it was Hel after all. There were standards and regulations to be kept up. _

"_Father - Father, please - when I said that, I didn't mean now - please - "_

_Loki's eyelids fluttered. "Hela..."_

"_Go, Father. Leave. Stay with them in the living world."_

_Loki smiled, and his teeth were stained with blood. _

"_Dying... anyway. Poison... Thanos - " He coughed, and it was obvious that this caused him pain. More blood ran down his chin. Glowing purple cracks spread over the floor from where he lay, and Loki's eyes flickered for a second - green, then purple, then back to green. _

"_Stay there for as long as you can, Father." _

"_Yes... Hela."_

"_Don't come back any time soon. Be more careful. Don't play with knives. Or matches. Or Thor."_

_Loki's form vanished. He might have been smiling at his daughter, who was still fussing distractedly over him. _

_Hela sighed, sitting back down on her throne. _You will be the... the death of me soon, Father, _she thought. _

Thor gasped as the hold of Loki's mind released him and he could see what had been going on while he'd been seeing the images.

Thanos was holding Loki by the throat, and the god was limp and helpless in the Titan's grip.

_Loki? Loki, can you hear me? _Thor extended his thoughts towards the god, and felt again the tangled skeins of dreams and images that were within Loki's mind.

_The screams of the wounded and the silence of the dead and fallen in the carnage of the Battle of New York... the face of Thanos, staring impassively down at him as he screamed... the Avengers standing over him as he lay on the ground, on the edge of unconsciousness from the Hulk's beating... the tiny wolf-face of Fenrir, sharp white teeth bared in a kind of smile, and his bright green eyes, so like Loki's, glinting... _

Thor tried to separate his mind from Loki's, but it was impossible. More images washed over his mind, burying his original thoughts.

_The tiny arrowhead-shaped head of Jormungandr, hissing with dissatisfaction and glaring at Odin as the god stared down at his grandchildren... the mixed emotions of love and horror and disbelief as Loki saw his daughter for the very first time... Odin, stabbing Angrboda through the heart, blue blood flooding across the floor... Odin, his face impassive as he sentence the child he'd saved to imprisonment... Odin, Odin, Odin, his one-eyed face emotionless as he dragged ten-year-old Hela to the black cliff edge and threw the girl from Asgard..._

"Thor..." Loki's hand moved as though to grasp the handle of a knife that was not there.

"_Thor..._" Thanos mimicked again. "You will never see your poor stupid brother again, Loki Laufeyson. Never speak to him, at any rate. Never tell him that you are sorry, so sorry for what you have done."

Loki's face was suddenly filled with fear. "No," he whispered, "No, please, not that, anything but that - "

_Loki! _Thor screamed. _Loki!_

Thanos re-shackled Loki to the wall, ignoring the god's many kicks, punches, and pleading.

"Please! Please, no, I'll do anything - "

"You had your chance, Loki Laufeyson. You had you choice, and you did not make the right one. You did not take your chance, because you are the fool that you are constantly proving yourself to be. Now - be silent."

Loki's own knife glittered in Thanos's hand, descending towards Loki's still-pleading mouth, light flashing off the blade. Thanos's other hand snapped out, wrapping around Loki's neck, squeezing so that Loki gasped for air.

And Loki, god of mischief, Trickster of Asgard, rightful king of Jotunheim...

... was finally silenced.

_Loki! _Thor shouted, but he was helpless to intervene.

Loki's agony-filled eyes were staring at Thor, begging him to help; Thor heard Loki's desperate, begging telepathy in his head:

_Thor, help me, please help me -_

But he could not.

_Please help me - _

He would not answer.

_Thor - _

He would not help.

Thor turned his face away; he couldn't watch this happen. He knew that it would be considered cowardly, he was used to dealing with his own pain, but watching his little brother - watching Thanos - no. He could not watch.

There was a guttural, animal scream, devoid of any kind of human word or syllable, from Loki's direction but still Thor didn't look. _Thanos must be cauterising the wound_, he thought.

Finally, when he thought that it would be safe, Thor turned his head. He was very nearly sick, which would _not_ have been nice with his gag.

There was blood everywhere, although it was quickly spreading across the floor so that the edge of the lake was about a metre or so away from Loki, who was lying in the rough centre of the slowly congealing lake, his body curled in on itself like a small child trying to hide from a monster; Thor could see that his brother was breathing, but only just.

Thanos was standing over the god, a triumphant look on his purple face and perverted pleasure at his victory glittering in his eyes. Loki's blood-covered golden knife was in his Gauntleted hand and... Thor paused so that he could nearly be sick again, then refocused. In the Titan's other hand was Loki's _tongue_.

Thanos stared scornfully down at Loki; his voice was self-assured and so smug that Thor wanted to kick the Titan's teeth in.

"Your power is gone, Loki _Silvertongue_, vanquished with a single movement of a knife. You are nothing now, nothing."

He tossed Loki's tongue to the group of creatures that were gathered at the edges of the room. One of them - the insect-like thing with multi-faceted glittering black eyes and clicking mandibles - caught it, then brought its misshapen hands to its equally warped mouthparts and ate it.

Loki made a strangulated kind of moaning sound, unable to make a single intelligible syllable. He turned his face so that he was looking at Thanos, opened his blood-caked mouth so the Titan could see the bloody and burnt stump where his tongue had been, and glared through the pain.

_You -, you complete - _

"And let's take that telepathy away as well. Can't have you sweet-thinking the next enemy you meet, can we?"

Thanos waved his hand, and Loki went silent again. His back arched in pain as long glowing purple cracks appeared in the floor around him. Another guttural, tongue-less scream tore through the room.

_He's channelling the power from that little fragment of Infinity Stone that Thanos gave him, _Thor realised. Loki screamed again, and Thor thought-shouted:

_Brother, no, stop, it'll only kill you faster_ _\- _

Loki's face turned towards his, and Thor saw his brother's entire tortured body flicker and fade for a moment into some other world, then come back into shaky focus. Thor gasped as best he could through the metal gag.

Loki was standing right beside him, one hand on Thor's shoulder - his brother was swaying dangerously as though too exhausted to stay on his feet.

_Loki? Are you alright?_

The look in Loki's eyes, despite his lack of speech and telepathy, communicated quite clearly the words: _Of course not, you blithering idiot. _

Then, his hand still gripping Thor's shoulder, purple light burst from Loki's pupils, engulfing them, and Thor felt like he was being twisted and stretched, pulled away from were they had originally been.

They vanished, leaving the drying blood on the floor, the scraps of Loki's flesh that were caught around the insect-like creature's still-clicking mandibles, and the bloody golden knife in Thanos's hand.

Thanos turned to the creatures. The insectile one chattered and clicked it shiny black mandibles in what seemed to be excitement, its fingers, which were tipped with long, viciously curved shiny black claws, making _clack-clack _noises as the hard keratin knocked on the polished wood of its spear shaft.

_Massster, _it hissed, the _s _elongated and distorted by the shape of its mouth. The rest of its speech was just as full of long syllables, interrupted every now and then by the clicking of its mandibles. _May we look for them, Massster? They look... sssimply deliciousss, for godlingsss._

"Find them. And when you do, because I know that you will... tear out the other's tongue as well."

Thanos paused, turning the knife over and over in his hand.

"Do not fail me."

* * *

Thanos looked down at the broken body of Vision. The robot's right arm was twisted and melted, and a clump of tangled wiring was visible through the gap in the ruined metal plates that made up his arm.

"It really is such a shame that it has to be this way," Thanos said, his voice calm, even conversational. "He could have seen it, you know. He could have watched. And then he would have died, of course."

Then Vision jerked back into consciousness, the glowing yellow stone in his head lighting up like an ON button.

Thanos reached down and grabbed the robot's throat in one huge purple fist, lifting him into the air. His other hand forced Vision's head back, throwing the glowing stone in his head into view.

"NO!"

A woman, her hair flying, ran towards Thanos, scarlet magic winking between her fingers. Without looking behind him, the Titan reached around, pulled her head back sharply, and then he casually threw her away from him.

Wanda collided with a tree then slid to the ground, her eyes closed and her breathing shallow.

Thanos smiled as Vision screamed as the Infinity Stone left his head, his electronic body jerking and twitching, then falling silent, his body going limp. Thanos dropped him, and the robot lay still on the ground.

Smiling, Thanos inserted the last Infinity Stone into the Gauntlet. Then he walked over to Wanda. The woman was moaning softly.

"Now," he said, "I'll deal with you."

Thanos reached down, the Infinity Stones glowing, casting a baleful light on Wanda's face. She woke up, her eyelids flickering.

"V-Vision - "

Then Thanos reached down, and as his gauntleted fingers touched her chest, light burst from Wanda's body, red at first, and then black.

"You can die." Thanos whispered.

Wanda screamed as the light engulfed her, and felt a horrible falling, separating sensation as though something was being sucked from her.

"No magic for you, witch," Thanos said, his voice seeming to rise and fall, in and out of hearing, "Not now, not ever."

Wanda lay on the ground, panting and trying to catch her breath; her hair was full of leaves from where she'd writhed uncontrollably, and her fingernails were caked with dirt as she'd been scratching at the ground as though trying to find something to hold onto, to keep her from fading away into the nothingness of the agony.

The view out of one of her eyes was warped and distorted by odd, shifting pink-red patches of colour that were swirling through her vision like scarlet ink that had been added to water. She'd burst a blood vessel in her eye, damn it. The echoes of pain were still screaming down her nerves.

Then Thanos reached down again, and Wanda's already-ruined vision exploded into shards of red and black that blurred and distorted what she was seeing even more. She screamed again, and somehow she reached out and pushed Thanos's Gauntleted hand away from her, squinting against the bright purple-blue light that was emanating from the two Infinity Stones.

The light vanished and Wanda managed to get to her feet. She tried not to look at Vision's twisted, mangled body, and remembered the evil 'peacekeeping' robotic monstrosity that had created him - Ultron. That made her remember - _No. Do not think about him. _

"_I hate you,_" she whispered, glaring up at Thanos.

"How strange. I seem to have many people hating me at this moment in time. Please continue with your own little piece of hatred; I find it... flattering."

Thanos laughed mirthlessly.

A twist of weak red magic emerged from the tip of Wanda's finger, and wrapped itself around Thanos's wrist. The Titan laughed softly, and pulled it away from his skin easily.

Then he reached down, and lifted Wanda by her throat. Wanda struggled, kicking at the Titan, but Thanos didn't seem to notice her blows.

He squeezed her throat mercilessly, cutting off her breath. She gasped, her face going white, red magic trailing uselessly from her fingertips.

Thanos squeezed even harder. Wanda's face took on a blue tint from lack of oxygen.

There was the horrible wet _snap _of bones breaking. Wanda sagged, hanging limply like a doll, her neck broken.

Thanos threw her body to the ground, inspected the amber Mind Stone one more time, then turned away from the two corpses, and left.

* * *

Part Two: **NO CHOICE IN THE MATTER**

Thanos was laughing as Thor stared in complete and utter horror at the intricate golden surface of the Infinity Gauntlet. It was glowing, all the Infinity Stones glittering with their respective colours.

"You should have gone for the head," Thanos whispered. The rent in his golden armour and the bloody axe blade that was still embedded deep in his chest seemed to cause him no pain or discomfort whatsoever. "This tragedy is entirely your fault now, Thor Odinson."

Green light flickered around the Gauntlet.

Thanos snapped his fingers.

One simple action.

One movement of the Gauntlet.

But that was all it took.

The Snap.

One snap of his fingers.

But it was the end of the Avengers, the Guardians, the Wakandans.

It was the end of heroes.

It was the end of those few who'd only come because someone else had asked them to, rather than the duty-driven majority.

"_Hi, I'm Peter Parker."_

"_I'm Doctor Strange."_

"_Oh, we're using our made-up names. Then I am Spider-Man."_

The innocents.

* * *

Steve Rogers turned to look at Bucky as his friend walked towards him.

Suddenly there were shots from somewhere behind them, and Steve ducked, feeling the two bullets whistle past his ear, trailing dark red droplets from the casing. Steve felt something hot and wet on his face - blood, and not his.

Bucky stumbled, nearly falling, and Steve saw that there was blood on the ground, slowly soaking into the dust. He ran to Bucky, caught his friend, and lowered him to the ground so that Bucky was sitting up against a rock.

"Bucky? Oh God, Bucky - "

The entire horrible moment was like deja vu, when Bucky - a Bucky who hadn't known who Steve was, who'd been brainwashed and mangled by HYDRA, turned into an assassin, a weapon - had shot him aboard the slowly sinking helicarrier; the shot was even in the same place, just below Bucky's ribcage.

There was a second shot that seemed to have partly shattered the left side of Bucky's collarbone, and there was blood from the wound smeared over the red star painted on his metal arm, as though the star was bleeding.

_It should have been me_, Steve thought. _It was me the first time. _

Only now it was Bucky in his place, Bucky in pain, now it was Bucky's blood soaking through his clothes and staining the ground, now it was Bucky's cold blue eyes, now clouded with pain, looking up at him.

"You shouldn't try to save me," Bucky whispered. A thin trickle of congealing blood ran from the corner of his mouth.

"No, Bucky, please - "

"You don't know how many people I've killed, Steve. You trust people. Sometimes that's a mistake. I shot your... colleague," he said the word _colleague _like it could mean a lot of things and Steve could choose which, "Natasha Romanoff straight through her hip just to get at the S.H.I.E.L.D Agent she was protecting. I nearly murdered Nicholas Fury and he even though he survived, he still had many, many injuries to recover from. I tried to kill Sam Wilson, who was known to many as the Falcon, and you, and I almost succeeded."

"No, Bucky, that's - " Steve tried to say _that's not true_, but he knew that it was, because when he'd seen Bucky for the first time after he'd 'died', his friend...just hadn't been his friend. He'd been blank behind the eyes; cold and merciless_. _He'd said: "_Who the hell is Bucky?_".

_Damn HYDRA_, Steve thought.

"And there are others that I could tell you about," Bucky said, and Steve saw that his hand was trembling slightly. Bucky saw him looking, made an attempt to stop his hand shaking, and continued: "...things that would make it hard for you to sleep at night, things that would have you, that would have _anyone_ screaming like a child. But for me..."

Bucky shuddered. Blood was still flowing from the wound, staining the ground a darker shade of red. Bucky didn't stop talking, like he needed to talk about it, even as his face got paler and paler and Steve tried to add his own sentences. It was like this was the first time Bucky had talked about it - and it probably was.

"My missions were everything to me, but if I saw something that reminded me of my past, HYDRA would immediately notice it and erase that from my memory. Then they... did other things, things that I don't want to remember. Even though some of it was just protocol, just them _prepping_ me for a mission." A spasm of pain crossed his face at the memory, or maybe it was just the wound. "I learnt not to let them see if I was... disturbed by what I saw. They used me, because they use people like puppets, and I learnt that the hard way." Suddenly his head snapped up. "Don't even try to hide how disgusted you are, Steve Rogers."

"Can you tell me what happened? After - after you fell from that train?"

Bucky took a deep breath. He touched the red star on his arm, and when he took his fingers away they were spotted with blood.

"I remember falling, banging against the cliff face, my arm..." Bucky's voice trailed off with a muttered: "I saw it falling..."

"Are you sure you want to tell me?" Steve asked, seeing the memory of pain join the real agony that was crowding Bucky's eyes. He gripped his friend's non-metal arm, and Bucky winced. The sudden, sharp pain seemed to revive him a little, but Steve knew that he was fading fast. Bucky kept talking, his words spilling out faster and faster as though Bucky was trying to justify everything that he'd done in the minute or so of life that he had left.

"I blacked out. When I woke up, I had two arms again. I remember just looking at my hands. The arm that had been missing was..." Bucky glanced at the silvery metal 'skin' of his robotic arm. "And I just panicked. I remember getting up, strangling one of them - I didn't know who I was, where I was, why I was there. I might have been dead for all I knew... Later, after they'd wiped my memory a couple of times, I wished that I _was _dead." He shivered. "And then the missions started. I remember one who wasn't even a mission... just got in the way, just an innocent. She was Alexander Pierce's kill, though. His housekeeper, I think. She saw me. And even though I was wearing my mask, she only saw half of my face, Pierce just shot her, _just shot her_,and I remember how she fell. They all fall differently."

"_Bucky..._" Steve didn't know what else to say. Bucky's breathing was slowing visibly and the ground around him was saturated with blood. He was obviously exhausted by what he'd said and by blood loss, and Steve knew that, whatever he did, he could not save his friend. Bucky was still looking at him.

_You are James Buchanan Barnes. I know you. You're my friend. If I can't trust you, I can't trust anyone._

_I wouldn't be able to trust myself. _

Voices echoed in his head; Natasha, the Winter Soldier, then the whistling of the wind on the side of a train in Germany, his desperate shout of 'Bucky!" after his friend had fallen to what had turned out not to be his death...

"_I know that Bucky means a lot to you, Steve... maybe too much."_

"_Who the hell is Bucky?"_

"_You're my mission." _

"_Then finish it."_

But Bucky hadn't killed him aboard the helicarrier. Steve could trust him. HYDRA was gone.

"You know what I said about how you trusting people was a mistake? They put a kill switch in my arm. They just need to push a button from wherever they're watching, and my heart stops. So I'm still taking orders from HYDRA. I can't refuse to carry them out. I've got no choice in the matter. That's what they said to me. _You've got no choice, soldier boy._ I have _no choice,_ Steve."

Bucky's blood-smeared hand closed on the handle of the knife at his belt. His other metal hand closed on Steve's wrist in a vice-like grip.

"_Hail HYDRA,_" he whispered, his voice bitter and full of hatred for the two words.

Then he reached up, still very quickly for a dying man, but with none of his usual assassin's cat-like grace. Wincing in pain from the movement, Bucky slashed the knife across Steve's throat. Blood poured over his hand. With his dying breath, Bucky whispered, "I'm sorry, Ste- "

_Click. _

Gone.

Bucky's body fell, landing on his back. The knife, the blade covered in Steve's blood, fell from his hand and reflected the wavering, flickering sunlight, on-off-on like a winking eye. The blood that was still flowing from the wound in his abdomen and the other in his collarbone slowed and stopped.

That was what a kill switch did.

It was what HYDRA did.

Bucky was only a few seconds away from death anyway.

The survivors - very few of these, all ashen-faced, terrified, grief-stricken and shell-shocked at what had happened - found the bodies.

It just showed how you could prove everything one person ever thought about you wrong, with just two simple words.

_Hail HYDRA. _

_I'm sorry._

* * *

Tony Stark looked up. Peter's face was white and he looked disoriented.

"Mr Stark - I don't feel so good," he said, stumbling a little.

"You're going to be alright, Peter - "

Peter took another step towards Tony.

"I-I don't know what's happening - I don't know what's happening - "

He fell against Tony, and Tony held the boy, feeling his eyes begin to fill with tears, seeing the first few tiny flakes begin to blow away in the wind, but slower, slower than the others. Peter's voice was desperate and pleading:

"I don't want to go - I don't want to go, Mr Stark, I don't want to go, sir, please - "

Tony carefully laid the boy down on a patch of ash. He could see that Peter was already disintegrating, and that as the boy raised his hand to touch Tony's arm, his hand disintegrated into red flakes.

Peter's eyes flicked sideways to look at Tony, and Tony could see with mounting terror that he was nearly gone now, too far gone.

"I'm sorry." Peter whispered. Then his eyes seemed to be looking somewhere over Tony's shoulder.

Then he was gone, disintegrating into a million tiny flakes of blood, bone, war suit and DNA. Just gone, with no mark or sign on the burnt earth of Titan to show that sixteen-year-old Peter Parker - Spider-Man - had ever existed. Tony knelt on the ash for another few seconds, his head in his hands, stubbornly refusing what had just happened, then stood up, wiping the tears from his eyes.

The Guardians were standing behind him, and Tony pitied them, as much as he truly hated the irritating, obnoxious, arrogant Peter Quill.

"Keep it together, Quill," he said, trying to keep his voice level.

Quill's face was shocked, and he was staring down at where Peter had been a few seconds ago.

"Oh man," he whispered, then disintegrated.

Tony stared, unable to help, as the rest of the Guardians began to disintegrate before his eyes - Drax, Mantis, the gigantic humanoid houseplant that was apparently named Groot by the mad talking cybernetic racoon thing called Rocket.

"Something's happening..." Mantis said, then in less than a second the empath was gone in a small puff of grey dust.

"Quill?" said Drax. Then he disintegrated.

"I... am... Groot..."

Everyone was dying too quickly, too fast; there was no time to say goodbye, no time for tears (although there would certainly be nothing from Tony for _Star Lord_.). Except for Peter - and he'd lasted about forty seconds longer than the rest, long enough to make Tony Stark cry.

_God, _he hated Thanos. Somehow Tony knew that Peter's death had been prolonged just to make it worse for _him_.

"Tony."

Tony turned at the sound of the familiar, slightly mournful voice. Behind him, Doctor Strange was looking at him with pure sadness in his dark eyes.

"Tony, I'm so, so sorry. I didn't know - I couldn't know that the boy would - that Thanos would - " The magician/doctor paused, tears glistening in his eyes. Tony knew that the same expression was mirrored on his own face.

"It was the only way." Doctor Strange whispered. To Tony, he finally looked his real age. A last vestige of bright green, intricately patterned Time magic escaped from his fingers, before he too disintegrated.

_The only way._

* * *

Thanks for reading! Please review!

Katie xx


	2. Chapter 2: Stone Spirits

Chapter Two: Stone Spirits

* * *

**Author's Note: Sorry this took so long to update! I've been writing some other fics to supplement, all Marvel. I suggest, if you want to read Infinity War, read my Age Of Ultron first, as it contains the story of the OC in my version of Infinity War. Anyway, here's Chapter Two! I'm making stuff up to do with the Infinity Stones, just had an idea to sorry for any typos throughout!**

**Katie Trillion xx**

* * *

_Loki was falling through blackness streaked with purple lightning. The violent display of natural power surrounded him, caressed him. It branched and crackled across his skin, but it didn't hurt at all. _

_Nothing hurt; not even his tongueless, bloody mouth. Slowly, still falling through the endless dark, he reached out and touched one of the bolts of lighting, before tightening his hold on it. Then the bolt folded in on itself, becoming something petite, humanoid, with fluttering feathered wings and long purple hair that crackled with violet sparks. The creature was not more than twenty centimetres in length, clearly female and pale-skinned, but she exuded a soft purple glow that lit up a little of the darkness that pressed in around them. _

_Loki tried to say "What are you?" but the words got mangled somewhere in his throat and came out as soft choking sounds. Then the – faerie? – raised her tiny hands and closed her eyes. Her aura of purple light strengthened and pulsed. Loki felt a sting at the back of his mouth, then gasped as he realised that he had a tongue. _

"_There," the faerie smiled. "Better?"_

"_Y-Yes," Loki croaked, his usually silver-smooth voice cracked and broken from disuse and the now-healed bloody rent at the back of his mouth. _

"_Shh, don't try to talk. You'll just hurt yourself."_

_Loki realised that they were no longer falling, more like floating. The lightning still slashed at the sky, tearing the black to shreds like torn fabric, but he and the faerie were still. _

"_Where…" he tried, then coughed and felt blood drip down his chin. Maybe his ribs were broken from the beating Thanos had given him. _

"_Hey," the faerie's voice was warm. "You know the Soul World? Well, this isn't it. This is the Power World. All the other Infinity Stones have separate worlds as well, and each one is unique. Here, I'll take us down to the ground." Wings fluttering like tiny windmills, her purple aura pulsed again and Loki felt the ground rush up to meet him. Then he was sitting in snow, but it wasn't cold. Then grey powder crumbled between his fingers, and he realised it was an ash plain, immensely huge, stretching as far as the eye could see. _

_On the horizon, a volcano – its crown glowing purple and black, and lava of the same colour spilling down its sides like a red-hot, lethal waterfall – dominated the whole landscape, a looming silhouette that seemed to sneer at the decimated plain below, which was scattered with chunks of rock and stone that were all glowing the colour of amethyst. _

"_You okay?" The faerie was staring out at the ash plain too, her wings constantly fluttering and beating the air. "You had a nasty fall."_

_Loki nodded, not taking his eyes off the volcano. As he watched, a spray of purple shrapnel and lava spurted from the crown, followed by a tremor that shook the entire plain and almost knocked him over onto his back. The faerie didn't seem bothered by the violent shaking that now wracked the plain and the volcano. _

"_It's just Thanos again," the faerie said dismissively. "We get big eruptions every few days now, but this is tiny compared to that last one." _

_Purple lightning began to rip at the sky above the volcano, before spreading wider in a web of purple, lancing from the thick mass of grim grey clouds that were crowding into the atmosphere, as though pushing and shoving each other for space. A gale started up, tearing at Loki's face and hair. _

"_Who are you?" Loki asked, finding that he was able to speak more easily now, although talking still hurt him. _

_The faerie turned to him, her purple hair whipping around her face, her wings beating even more furiously to combat the wind. Her soft purple aura was almost obscured by the driving rain that had begun to batter them, pummelling the ground and hissing at it came into contact with the volcano. _

"_My name's Hestia," she said, flying closer to him. Her aura extended and widened so that it covered them both, like an umbrella; it protected them from the worst of the rain and wind, although Hestia shivered, hugging herself. _

_Loki smiled. "Come and sit here," he told her, patting his shoulder. Hestia flew even closer to him and sat down, nestling her head in the crook of his neck. "You belong here," she said, smiling. Then she jerked in alarm. "I can sense it in your aura. But your magic – something's not right. I'm a Stone Spirit – there are many of us, and we control and regulate the abilities of each Stone. We can sense magical auras, control them as well. Part of your magic feels forced somehow – strange, invasive, not like your natural type. What happened?"_

_She stood up, before jumping off Loki's shoulder and hovering in front of him again, still maintaining her aura. _

"_What happened to you, Loki?" she pressed._

_Loki looked away from her. "It was Thanos," he muttered. "Took a piece of Infinity Stone and forced it to bond with me. He said it was going to kill me."_

_Loki looked down at his hands. They were shaking, and glowing slightly purple; the same shade as Hestia's aura. _

"_Well, that fragment is going to react to being this close to a Primal Source," Hestia said, gesturing to the volcano. In response to Loki's confused stare, she elaborated: "Every Infinity Stone contains the source of its power. I'm confined to this Stone, so I don't know what the others are, but the Power Stone is the volcano, because it's one of the most awe-inspiring aspects of natural power. This world also incorporates storms, earthquakes, and even the odd tsunami from time to time, but we keep that last under control. We only get tsunamis when Thanos gets out the big guns on people – in fact, I think that last one we had was when he put that fragment in you. Oh – I'm sorry." Loki had winced at the mention of it. _

"_It's fine." _

_Hestia stared up at the sky, which was still webbed with pulsing veins of lightning, flashing sporadically and lighting up the elemental carnage of the erupting volcano far away. "It isn't your temperamental brother causing all this lightning, is it?"_

* * *

**Next chapter will hopefully be longer but I hope you enjoyed it! Please review!**

**Katie Trillion xx**


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